Market prepares to know start of OPAs

Sura and Nutresa shares remain suspended on the Colombian Stock Exchange. Shareholders await the start of the offer.

Once the approval of the Financial Superintendence has been given and the guarantees to support the Public Acquisition Offers (OPA) have been accredited, the Colombian market is preparing for Jaime Gilinski to notify the start of the two new rounds in which he will seek to buy more shares of Sura and Nutresa.

The Colombian Stock Exchange (BVC) notified on Thursday night that, in compliance with regulations, the banker from Cali had accredited the aforementioned guarantees; which allows us to infer that, most likely, it will have the green light to carry out the new offers.

Gilinski will go for a minimum of 5% of the floating shares of Sura and 18.3% of the representative titles of Nutresa. For this, precisely, the bidder explained that the guarantees for each will be US$115.6 million and US$560 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, yesterday marked the 15th day since trading in floating Sura shares was suspended due to the announcement of the new offers. Therefore, the start of this new transfer cycle might be notified at any time, since that was the same period that the market waited to know the official start of the past takeover bids.

What you have and what you lack

Hand in hand with the beginning of the period of new acceptances, the booklets should arrive in which the details of the offers made by Gilinski will be known.

Some stockbrokers have commented that, in order to give more transparency to this business, these booklets should present the updated shareholding composition of the two intended companies.

Until now, with the awards that the BVC has already made to Gilinski, he has positioned himself as the second main partner of these companies from Antioquia. In the case of Nutresa, it kept 27.68% and, in Sura, 25.25%.

However, now it intends to reach a stake of up to 30.5% in Sura and up to 45.98% in Nutresa.

In his intention to convince those who did not sell to him in the first two rounds, he increased the value payable for each species of the two intended companies.

Gilinski increased the price offered by Sura to US$9.88 from the US$8.01 he had previously paid. Likewise, it raised to US$10.48 the value to be paid for each Nutresa share from the US$7.71 announced in the first acquisition offer. The boards of directors of the conglomerates in question had ruled out accepting Gilinski’s first proposal, stating that it did not coincide with the fundamental value of the companies.

This suggests that executives will have to sit down once more to analyze this offer and make a determination on it.